Biblical Hebrew Blog by ClassicalHebrew.com

A 3rd Century CE Roman grave has revealed a startling find- a small golden scroll with the Hebrew prayer, known as the Shema, "Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one" (Deuteronomy 6:4). The scroll is a Greek transcription of the prayer, and was found resting in an infant’s grave. This finding may push back by 600 years the evidence of a Jewish Presence in modern day Austria.

To read more go to the University of Vienna.

Some caution needs to be exercised however since the finding is an isolated one, and may have been carried as an amulet by a non-Jew. Despite these concerns, it is an exciting find given the quality of the amulet and its dating.

This finding is analogous with the silver-scrolled amulets found outside of Jerusalem at Ketef Hinnom which are much older than the Dead Sea Scrolls. These amulets were also found in a family grave and parallel the Priestly Blessings found in Numbers 6: 24-26.

"The Lord (Yhwh) bless you, and Keep you,
The Lord make his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you,
The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace."

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A new seal stamp bearing a Hebrew name has been found in the excavations in the Old City of Jerusalem under the authority of Eilat Mazar. If one recalls it will be remembered that many other exciting seals and bullae have already been uncovered in older excavations at the same site, such as the name ‘Gemaryahu, son of Shaphan’, who is recorded in Jeremiah 36:10-12, 25 and was the scribe to King Jehoiakim (608-591) in Jerusalem.

It was then with some excitement that this seal was revealed with another Biblical name, that of Temech- a Priestly family mentioned in the book of Nehemiah. However the reading was quickly changed, after it was realized one needed to read the Hebrew characters in the reverse, since that is how it was inscribed on the stamp. Once the stamp is then impressed into wet clay it would leave the name of the bearer the correct way, from right to left.

The proper reading is shin, lamed, mem, taw and can be pronounced a variety of ways, one being ‘Shlomit’. This name appears to be female because of the characteristic taw ending, although it can be argued was the name of a man. King Solomon (in Hebrew Shlomo) is the largest personality in the Bible who bore the male version of this name. Both names come from the verb meaning ‘to be safe’; and the word for ‘peace’, Shalom is also derived from this verb.

‘Shlomit’ forms the bottom register of the seal while above it, flanking what appears to be a horned altar, are two bearded figures. In the top register is a crescent moon. The dating is still under debate and shall not be concluded until we have information as to the stone material of the seal, and its stratigraphic placement in the excavation. However a date may be proposed based on the glyptic scene which is common for the Iron Age period, and more specifically the late seventh and early sixth centuries. This is a small but very impressive seal, offering us a wealth of information. Let us hope for many more this year!

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The main source of water in ancient Jerusalem was the Gihon spring, located just outside the city walls. When the Assyrians waged an attack against Judah towards the end of the 8^th century BCE, led by king Sennacherib, king Hezekiah realized that in order to sustain throughout an Assyrian siege, the city must be better protected and the water must be accessible from inside the walls of the city. Hezekiah, considered to be one of the better kings of Judah both from a moral standing and as a leader of the people, substantially enlarged the area surrounded by a defensive wall to include more civilians, and built a tunnel that led the water from the Gihon spring into the city. Thus, when the Assyrians attacked in 701, Jerusalem withstood their attack and they eventually withdrew. The great importance of Hezekiah’s building projects is emphasized in the summary of his reign: “And the rest of the deeds of Hezekiah and all his might and the building of the pool and the tunnel bringing the water into the city are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah” (2 Kings 20:20).

While the tunnel had been well known, the Siloam inscription was discovered by accident in 1880 by a young student from the nearby mission, who happened to look up while walking through the dark tunnel and noticed the inscription. The Siloam tunnel is a rare case in which we have an archaeological finding, including a written inscription, which enriches our knowledge of a biblical report of events. In order to build the tunnel, the workers split into two teams, digging from either end of the future tunnel while following a crack in the rock. When the two work-teams approached each other, they heard the sound of the axes of the other team and knew that the breaking through of the tunnel was almost complete. The inscription they placed at the place of the meeting of the two teams describes the day on which this meeting occurred.

The Siloam inscription is one of the only pieces of written evidence surviving from the First Temple period. Aside from the historical data it provides, it also supplies us with knowledge of the scribal practices of the time (separation of words using dots), the evolution of Ancient Hebrew handwriting, and facts about grammar and pronunciation which are very valuable to the linguistic research of biblical Hebrew.
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The city of Lachish, located in the maritime lowlands of Judea, is first mentioned in the Bible during Joshua’s conquest. After the Gibeonites deceptively made a covenant with Joshua, many of the Canaanite kings were alarmed that they might be conquered with Gibeonite assistance, and therefore set out to fight the Gibeonites. Joshua took over all of these rebellious cities, and Lachish, being one of them, was later part of the territory assigned to the tribe of Judah.

Lachish, located on an important cross-roads between the coast and Hebron, became a major city in the Judean kingdom during the reign of Rehoboam, and was conquered by the Assyrians in the time of Hezekiah (in 701 BCE), when it became the Assyrian local headquarters. Due to the fact that the Assyrians failed to conquer Jerusalem, it was Lachish that was depicted as the main Judean city overcome during the Assyrian invasion and carved reliefs describing its destruction were placed in the central room of Sennacherib’s new palace in Nineveh.

The archaeological findings from Lachish are extensive and include a temple, inscriptions and more from the Canaanite period, and an impressive fortress which should probably be dated to the Israelite period. Many ostraca, stamps and weights containing Hebrew writing that probably should be dated to a period after the destruction by the Assyrians when the city was re-inhabited teach us of the every-day life there.

Most famous among the archaeological finds are the “Lachish Letters.” In these letters, which were written on re-cycled pieces of broken earthenware pottery (known as “ostraca”) we find an extensive correspondence between an outpost in the vicinity of Lachish and the Lachish military headquarters. The letters were all written within a few days, and deal with a book (meaning, a letter) which was read by someone unauthorized to do so or possibly was misread and misunderstood. These letters also mention a military delegation sent to Egypt and other information. Based on archaeological data, the letters are apparently from the eve of the Babylonian destruction, and therefore can be connected to the Babylonian conquest of Judea and the siege over the few remaining cities – Jerusalem, Lachish and Azeka.
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